The present invention is directed to a method and corresponding machines for making pre-cooked and semi-pre-cooked meals.
The sector involved in this patent's technique is that of making ready-to-serve food.
Statement of the prior state of the art. The industry making ready-to-serve food is well known and increasingly well-developed. Apart from this the ready-to-serve meals trade is also increasingly well-developed. Both businesses form a partnership in towns and cities to solve the cooking problem at homes at which all the members are at work or otherwise busy.
ES2116236 consists of a procedure for pre-cooking ingredients for a rice patella, in which a conventional pre-cooking process is carried out in a container and the contents and its container are inserted into a bag in which a vacuum is formed. This is sterilised, stored and distributed.
ES2121692 is a process for pre-cooking rice paellas, which, as compared with the one described in the previous case, adds the fact that the paella dish is cooled prior to fully removing its contents, to be inserted in the bar.
ES2096530 is a procedure for preparing pre-cooked paellas, which consists in preparing a lightly-fried base in which to fry the ingredients of the paella except for the rice, which is deep-frozen and supplied in solid form with the contents frozen.
ES2032704 covers a procedure for preparing a rice-based pre-cooked meal, which includes the preparation of the lightly fried base in large quantities and separately frying all the ingredients with parts of said fried base, being deep frozen and served ready to eat except for cooking the rice.
ES2048112 is a procedure for preparing a pre-cooked rice-based meal, which includes a large capacity container in which a lightly fried base is prepared, which is then put into separate smaller pans in which the rest of the food is prepared, and then frozen to be marketed.
ES2035769 covers a procedure for preparing frozen cooked paella, in which a flat container is used to prepare a meal based on rice and water with an oil-fried base, tomato, chicken and rabbit pieces, saffron, salt, greens and optionally snails, in which these items are cooked except for rice, which is added one hour afterwards, later being cooled for 2-4 hours and the container wrapped in shrink-wrap plastic and deep-frozen.
Nevertheless, these are types of pre-cooked food which can only be made by experts, or have been considered as such. This is in particular the problem with paella. The paella, a meal which originated in Valencia and has spread widely all over the world, nevertheless involves the problem of its home-made style of cooking. It is not enough to supply the ingredients, but the way this is cooked has such a great influence on the results that, even with the same content, two dishes can be enormously different if these are made by different cooks. This problem is heightened when this is cooked in so-called industrial containers containing hundreds or thousands of portions. Furthermore the presence of an individual paella, or pan of paella, just as this has been cooked, has a much better appearance than a portion of the same dish served on a plate, since the Valencian tradition is to eat from the paella cooking pan itself without transferring this to an individual plate.